Disengaged students and dialogic learning: The role of CSCL affordances

Benzi Slakmon*, Baruch B. Schwarz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Only a few studies have dealt with the challenge of bridging the linguistic gap between the dialogic realm and the talk of disengaged students. Bridging this gap is particularly relevant to the CSCL community since one of its utmost aims is to promote the dialogic. This study aims to articulate how to harness the CSCL design and affordances to enhance dialogic pedagogy with disengaged students. Using temporal analysis of philosophical discussions for children, we focus on three disengaged 8th grade students participating in successive discussions mediated by a CSCL tool (Argunaut), and follow the way they talk with their peers in the classroom. The study shows the gradual emergence of the dialogic among those students. We describe the transition of their talk moves, from initially reproducing the way they talk to adopting dialogical norms. To explain this we conceptualize the notion of carriers of discursive norms and discuss its transformative role in dialogue. The dialogic transition was made possible by the pedagogical design and the design of the CSCL tools. These affordances allowed the students change the meaning of the conversational building blocks of space, silence, addressee, and the ethics of talk.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)157-183
Number of pages27
JournalInternational Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Volume9
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2014

Keywords

  • Dialogic pedagogy
  • Discursive norms
  • Disengaged students
  • Philosophy for children
  • Technology affordances
  • Voice

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Disengaged students and dialogic learning: The role of CSCL affordances'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this